KEY POINTS:
Aucklanders are used to developers trying to ride roughshod through such inconveniences as planning rules and regulations. But even the most practised of our planning rule-benders must be left gobsmacked with admiration - and jealousy - by the Government's Wild West approach to plonking a great rugby stadium on the Auckland waterfront.
Instead of bending the rules, Sport Minister Trevor Mallard, with the blessing of Prime Minister Helen Clark, plans to suspend the Resource Management Act (RMA) totally. Eager to please, Auckland City Mayor Dick Hubbard is happy to cheer them on - even if it means turning the council's acclaimed Britomart heritage precinct redevelopment into an instant slum.
To the mayor, hiding what was supposed to have been a reminder of Auckland's mercantile links to the sea behind a bleak stadium wall is progress. Champion or anti-champion of Auckland? It's no contest.
My opposition to the waterfront site has been well traversed in previous columns. But I didn't expect a Labour Government to suspend the planning processes in such a cavalier fashion in order to ram its project through.
There are proposals to amend the act relating to reclamation to speed up that process and to alter the Port Companies Act, which requires Ports of Auckland to do nothing that worsens the commercial well-being of the port. The Government also proposes to amend the hearing and appeal requirements of the RMA.
This will mean that Aucklanders who want to comment on or object to the proposals will be restricted to making submissions to a select committee of national politicians. What interest or knowledge or concern for Auckland's waterfront and its environs these MPs might have is anyone's guess.
Mr Mallard says a senior planning lawyer or perhaps a retired Environment Court judge will be retained to try to keep the committee focused on the planning niceties. How generous. But in the end, the fate of our waterfront will be up to a gaggle of party politicians whom we will have to trust to suspend any love of rugby, or desire not to embarrass the Government, when making their recommendation. Then it will be back to Parliament to vote on.
So much for due process. Mr Mallard says it would be "prudent to pass special legislation to provide the consents required" because of the "unacceptable" uncertainties of the RMA process.
For years I have stuck my neck out in defence of RMA procedures, backing this Government's argument that the act's safeguards protect both the citizenry and the environment from the worst excesses of rampant and unbridled development. In the past, when the cowboys have railed against the barriers erected to keep them in check, I have defended the processes, arguing, as the Government did, that the RMA was the community's shark net against the barbarians.
I still believe that and I feel betrayed that the Government, and my mayor, seem to believe that when they want to play the shark, they have some special licence to raise and lower the net as they see fit.
At least they could have been upfront about it and invoked the draconian Public Works Act. But that would have involved trying to argue they were seizing the land for essential public works, and that could have been a tad embarrassing, even where a rugby stadium was concerned.
So instead, they've decided to drive a hole through the RMA. How weak the Government will sound in future when their opponents demand amendments to the act to help their developer buddies.
Not only are the resource consent processes to be bowdlerised, but Auckland has been given just two weeks to choose between the waterfront option or the latest revised Eden Park plan. And there's a gun to the head. Mr Mallard says if Auckland can't decide within two weeks, then it's Christchurch's Jade Stadium. Which, given our usual inability to agree on anything, was about the best news emerging from Mr Mallard's Friday's press conference.
As far as the waterfront option is concerned, Aucklanders are being asked to support a project which as yet has no definite costings or design.
To meet deadlines, driving piles for a $120 million platform will have to begin in May, even though no final design or maximum price will be available until August. This all sounds more nightmare than vision.
We have two weeks to demand better. Act now, or share the blame.
